I know a guy who actually has a shop... not really a body shop, but he does work on car bodies. he had a 57 chevy wagon in there and the area above the side windows was all exposed bare metal, rust holes and spray foam filler. I thought it was someone elses repair and he was taking it all off to patch it right. nope. he put the foam in there and was doing the repair and was going to bondo over rust, holes and spray foam. he actually accepted money from the owner to do this. this was a couple years back and he's still in business. I had a customer who bought a 72 suburban from Oregon. the bottom 12 inches of the truck had been repainted. there was a few bubbles here and there that I was going to fix. I ended up replacing about 8" of the bottom of the truck just about all the way around. bondo, brass brillo pads and screen mesh. there was a good 15 pounds of dirt and pine needles inside the lower quarters.
A buddy of mine is high school had a 55 210. It had so much bondo on it that he had to put 4 air shocks on it to make it sit level and that was just barely.
Sorry to hear about the mud, but I love those 55 Ford 2 door posts. If you don't mind, what did you pay for it?
I just glue plaster lath on to the boby with liquid nails then bondo over that. I went to body school back in 1970. the old guy that taught the class showed us how to do it fast and cheap so as to be able to make a living. Keep in mind that cars in those times were mostly just transportation. The insurance companies would total out most cars before they would pay to have them fixed.The fixable totals usually wound up in the hands of used car jockeys. They were our customers and all they wanted was a cheap fix that would enable them to sell it. Also back then a rusty car wasnt considered to be worth fixing like we would today. I personally have had some bondo jobs that have lasted 20 years or more.
Had a Model A roadster and the rumble seat lid rubber stops were missing and somebody covered the hole decklid with about 3/8" of Bondo to make the lid level with the side panels. Go figure....
Boy, that sounds like a lot of work for the lack of spacers. I just riveted new quarters on my Suburban. The old ones the taillights were falling out of them. The truck's so rotty it would cost thousands to fix right - or use freebies I cut off a parts truck and pop rivet them on, cost about $15 - $5 for the HF riveter and rivets, $5 for a can of spray paint. Another $4 for drill bits. It's just a beat-up old work truck. I think that's the sort of work you find in these old cars - just transportation, make it look pretty and don't worry about how. I'd never fix one of my good cars that way. I remember looking at a '40 Buick Super coupe for sale at a show, a driver that had been sitting, they wanted $7500 for. It had signs of bondo over screen in both rockers and parts of the fenders peeking through the black paint. I'd be afraid to sand through it to see what's under it - my '40 Roadmaster is probably more solid, at least the rockers have no holes.
Aw don't feel so bad. A mechanic told me he told a guy to fix the frame on his car, or it would not get a sticker. He came back a few days later with a fairly smooth painted frame. It had been coated with filler. He had fixed the floor with the same stuff, using a sheet of tar paper to cover the holes, and troweled on about a half inch of the stuff. However I did stumble on a way to remove it by accident. If you heat the pannel with a torch, the stuff looses it's bond, and can be scraped off with a putty knife.
i once met a guy who wanted the look of a molded in conny kit. he extended the bumper away from the car propped up an old spare tire and proceded to use about 10 gallons of filler to mold it to the car. do you think it cracked a little? another time my dad was working on an old front engine dragster,doing the paint, when we started stripping the chassis my dad got my attention so he could show me where joints in the tubing had been welded on top and the seams on the bottom hidden with bondo. the amazing thing is that this car had been on the track for years running consistant 130mph passes. there is no end to the stupid things you will see done with plastic filler.
On my 39 ford truck I'm dealing with some shady body repair. There's only about 1/4" of filler but there were some holes that were filled with silicone. I don't feel too bad though because I got a good deal on the body, and I knew that there were issues with that one door.
My favorite bondo jobs are the ones rolling around town that someone just slapped it on rough,no cheesgrate & then spray flat black guide coat on. When I see that it makes me cringe.
Tore into the bondo in the fender of my '62 Tempest last weekend because I got tired of the cracks filling with water and leaking rusty goo. I guess I wasn't prepared for what I found. It looks like somebody took their first shot at gas welding, tried to fix it with a pick-axe, and drove back and forth to the bondo store until it looked like the other side. I'm thinking of just planting some winter rye on it until I can do some metalshaping.
I guess a "Skim Coat"of Bondo is directly proportionate to who's in the shop at the time it occurs....
one thing to be said for buying a body shell..you can see almost every inch of steel from the inside and know if there were repairs made in its past. well its just steel..you can fix it
I'm a wholesale buyer for a used dealer in Texas, I use one of these.. what a life saver! I can quickly tell if a car has been painted or if there is Bondo. I usually look at about 20 cars on Auction day, so this really speeds up the process.
Yeah, well, don't forget bondo and fiberglass were once the cutting edge of auto body technology. All of Ed Roth's masterpieces were made of it. In those days, you couldn't just order some new reproduction body panels. And after beating and welding patches out of sheet metal stock, you usually needed something to smooth over it. ... By the way, I have seen the steel wool trick, too, but never that bad. That was never considered first class.
Always have one of those thin refrigerator magnets you get for free, advert or calendar ones. They are pretty weak, so if they wont stick, it has bondo.
Yep, I've seen steel wool, news paper, chicken wire, rat wire, rags, duct tape and one guy even put a bunch of miscellaneous brackets and bolts in the lower quarter panel . I remember a product available in the 70's that was marketed for the purpose of filling holes, I think it was called Gorilla Hair, no "backing" required .
That looks exactly like both quarters on my OT 68 Camaro when I started tearing it apart. My favorite removal method? 2 lb hand sledge!
you need a mill thickness gauge to check the cars, for guys who cant just see the rude repairs. most magnets will stick right through the fillers, thats where the mill guage comes in handy. the magnetic ones are cheap, and pretty accurate. skull
My "colledge perfesser" brother dicked up dads van and puttied it back to square. I got it years later and was driving innocently around when I went way to fast over a railroad track and got some air. Well there ws a crack and a pow and a slight lifting of the rear end. I pull over and theyres a very large piece of bondo laying on the ground that looks like the side of the van. results of no prep.
I get a chuckle out of these post but I feel for anyone who unknowingly buys a bondo buggy. It is a lesson that is not soon forgotten. I have made my living doing body work for over 35 years. I have worked on my fair share of bondo buggies. Several times over the years after work had begun and the owners seen what lies beneath the work was stopped, refilled, spotted in and sold. Its terminal, close her up and ship her out. Cheaper for car owner to find a better car than redo an old hack job. The guys who don't know better are often blamed when too much bondo is used. It should be known that even the "good" body men can hack with the best hackers, most just choose not to. I have seen lead misused many times as well with chunks falling off and large rust bubbles coming up through the lead. I am certainly not trying to defend the hackers but rather explain the reasons why they did what they did. It was almost always time and money. In the 60's and 70's a car that was 5 years old was about used up. Drivetrain was tired and the body had some or several rust holes. Most owners either wanted to get another year or so out of their car or were going to sell the car and needed it to "look better" to sell it. Cost to replace panels averaged 10 times the money of a quick cave and pave job. In most cases the fill job was done at the owners request to do it as cheap as possible. The exception being the used car lot where deception was the key. Now days these old cars are cool and have value. Now days most are worth the money to do it right. Now days most owners want a job that will last many years. Now days owners spend way more dollars to get the better repair because their car is special. Cars are thought of very differently today than back then. Steve
The Jalopy Journal
